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ZZZzzzombies – why I'm bored of Zombie Games

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Zombies, zombies, zombies. It seems that whatever direction you look at the moment you'll see the shuffling undead. Whether it's the latest version of Treyarch's zombie mode in CoD Black Ops 2, or DayZ player diaries that every games review site seems to have jumped on, or new developments just hitting the headlines like State of Decay or The War Z. There's Telltale's admittedly different Walking Dead series, or the social game by the same name and the upcoming shooter in the same universe. There's the classics Left 4 Dead 1 and 2, Greenlight's newly accepted Project Zomboid – the list goes, on and on and will never stop unless you headshot it.

Theoretically this is great. Zombies are good cannon fodder, they're great catalysts for a tense environment or good story telling – but like the apocalypse that inevitably follows every zombie invasion, it's the sheer numbers of them that's proving impossible to deal with.

You see I love zombies. I think they're awesome. I've been reading the Walking Dead comics since they first came out. I've read Max Brooks' Zombie Survival Guide and the Follow up Day Z. I own copies of Dead Set, Flight of the Dead, Dance of the Dead and loads of others. I even played all the way through Land of the Dead FPS, though it was pretty poor. So when some of the real zombie survival games began to appear in the past 12 months I was pretty hyped . Finally I was going to be able to play the zombie apocalypse games of my dreams: fighting from a home base, surviving with friends and gunning down as many groaning, walking corpses as I could see.

But with these games just around the corner, months away from release, I'm not really that excited. I'm not saying I won't play them and I'll probably be writing another article afterwards telling you how great they are, but I certainly feel like my enthusiasm for the zombie genre is waning, especially in gaming, because there's just so much of it.

It feels a bit like the cover system pioneered in Gears of War. Shooting from behind a chest high concrete wall was awesome back in 2006. You sprayed bullets over the top and jumped in and out of cover, gunning down enemies. It was great. It wasn't long though before everyone was doing it and it became not only tiring but completely unwarranted in some senses.

Zombies are a little different because they're a combination of antagonist and setting, as opposed to a gameplay mechanic, but they are becoming equally tiring.

A simple solution for my problem here would be to back off from zombies for a bit. Take a break and enjoy other games – which believe me I am doing – but it seems a shame that we've reached this point. Saying that however, makes me feel like the douche that claims a band isn't cool any more just because all of his friends like it.

However underneath this somewhat selfish whine, is the fact that as usual, the gaming industry is lacking in originality. Developers saw it work with Day Z and the higher ups said, do that. We want our own version of that.

It's understandable but a shame.

Perhaps the best I can hope for with this is that we get different sorts of zombie games. Epic Game's teaser'd Unreal Engine 4 game Fortnite looks perhaps the most promising. It's gone cartoony, included a serious building mechanic and mixed up the enemies so we're not just fighting massed undead with a few special zombies thrown in like in Left 4 Dead. There's going to be little sneaky ones that open the doors of your fortress after tunnelling under the walls and other weird and wonderful creatures. We don't have all the details yet, but the innovation is there.

Permadeath has become the talk of the town recently too thanks to new directions like Day Z – despite being the source material for many an upcoming clone, let's give credit where credit's due. That's something relatively new too. And Telltale's Walking Dead is hinting at the potential for real story driven games, with an emphasis on narrative over action.

These are good. These are new things being tried and they don't always work, but they're at least peaking interest in a genre that has become oversaturated and is in danger of stumbling on, forever groaning its woes, with no one quite sure if it's dead or not.

All the greatest zombie books, zombie movies, zombie comics, they remember that zombies themselves are boring. They're lifeless and lack much beyond a basic primal fear that when we've had enough of, will completely lose its effectiveness. It's the characters around them, the human stories the new gameplay systems, the new settings – these are the things that keep us entertained, not just being able to get an achievement for killing our 10,000th deadite.

My plea to developers is to remember this. Give us zombie games if that's what the bottom line demands, but keep it fresh please. Because I love zombies. Lots of people love zombies. I would hate to see that love die because it had been beaten to death.

What about you guys? Are you bored of the undead yet? Or are you happy to continue slaying the walking corpses for a while longer?

Comments

we need zombies or something that scares of the crap out the players, if their weren't zombies what would shoot at the same old waves just regular characters from the game borrring. the game developers should change it up a little bit like u can choose ur avatar or ur character do the shooting and have unlock characters from different games u like too shoot or mix up little. like when u shoot a zombie have a finishing move or when u shoot at them like sniper elite bad ass game when u shoot u see where the bullet goes that would be f@cking crazy not just shooting at them wasting ur ammo. if the developers should stop thinking what they want and ask gamers what we want and what to except in the came more head exploding, limbs falling stuff like not some boring crap

Ya and remember the nazi enemy craze back a few years ago Its just a fad
Also dayz tries to create a realistic zombie apocalypse experiance where zombies aren't the biggest threat warz tries to copy that and failed miserably Its a mockbuster

Errrrr check your facts. WarZ did NOT, I repeat NOT begin before DayZ. Every bit of proof you can find points to game development starting around may-june last year. That includes name/domain registering etc. The WarZ lied about everything and that is a well known and proven fact. So yeah. WRONG!

It just depends on the game itself. If done in a unique way you won't be bored. Some zombie games you should check out...
The Organ Trail: Ever wonder what the Oregon Trail would be like with zombies. Wonder no more.
Play for free at the website, or buy the Director's Cut at the website or on Steam.
Project Zomboid: It's the zombie apocalypse so what now? There's zombies, but also raiders, collecting water and food, sleeping, fear, depression, rationing, supplies running scarce, barricading, did I mention zombies...
Telltale Games The Walking Dead: Do I need to say anything more?
Zombie Games Dot Net: A site with over 300 free flash games based around the undead. Some good, some bad. Ones to check out? Infectionator 2, Rebuild 2, Dude and Zombies...
Oh and SAS: Zombie Assault 3

look back 20 years and the vampire franchise which is still getting beat to death then the werewolves then the mummy now zombies and bigfoot next who knows maybe we can take a jump back to the late 70's and all of the 80's thenmaybe we can get back to the grassroots and have serial killers and abnormally large animals

When something becomes successful, of course people are going to pander it. Look at all the Slenderman games that have come out lately - they're all terrible one-trick ponies, yet apparently we need 500 of them.